Worldwide, agriculture is in crisis.  Food production is increasingly reliant on intensive cultivation techniques that place unsustainable demands on water supplies, soil fertility and exacerbate the loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation.  The realization that climate change will profoundly affect the ability of communities to sustain their traditional cultivation systems and increasing world demand for renewable energy sources has led to unprecedented increases in the cost of staple food grains.  At one level these changes provide a welcome focus on agriculture and provide an impetus for renewed investment.  This comes at a time when the lessons of the first Green Revolution are still being learnt and the general realisation that the benefits were unevenly distributed with poor rural communities missing out.  In particular, Chambers and Ghildyal (1985) felt that technological innovations were not made available to small or resource poor farmers on favourable terms, nor were they necessarily suited to their agroecological and socioeconomic conditions.

 

It is widely recognised that making agriculture work for the poor requires new thinking in the debate on sustainable development, although the concept of sustainability, particularly when applied to agriculture, is poorly defined.  Conway and Barbier (1990) argued that social, cultural, political and economic dimensions are crucial factors in defining the sustainability of agricultural production.  At NRI we accept that levering the rural poor from poverty can not be achieved by technical innovation alone and that a range of concerted interventions are needed which reflect the socioeconomic and cultural demands made on communities at risk. 

 

NRI retains capacity in a wide range of disciplines across the social and natural sciences and works best when these skills are brought together in focused interventions to improve the livelihoods of vulnerable populations.  These interventions are based on agro-ecological principles that maximise the impact of value addition while avoiding costly off-farm inputs.  We work to enable farmers to cultivate crops using environmentally benign techniques that conserve water, improve soils and minimise the impact of pests and diseases in field crops and in storage. 

 

NRI is not only engaged in knowledge creation but also actively engaged in knowledge transfer and building capacity (SCARDA) through formal training courses for professional degrees and informal training of SMEs and growers with specific needs such as understanding the implications of the ever increasing complexity of export regulatory requirements. 

 

To resource poor farmers risk management and profitability are prime motivators for adopting change.  Polycultures are widely used in Africa to mitigate against adverse weather and yet in South Asia such practices as rare.  NRI researchers are actively involved in assessing the risks and benefits of modifying traditional practices, and assessing the likely impacts of adopting new ones such as brassica crops incorporating Bt genes to control leaf feeders (www.cimbaa.org) and odour-baited traps for control of tsetse (www.tsetse.org).

Examples of our work

• Improved crop protection by smallholders through the development of improved farming systems and new technologies;
• Supporting the production of high value products by smallholder farmers;
• Developing better research and advisory services for poor farmers that integrate farmers' and consumers' knowledge and input supply and marketing information.